For Want of an Orange
by UnknownExceptionError
Summary: They digitized an orange, and got back an annoyed Bit. AU where a bit was sent to the real world by the laser. Fun program/user interactions and general ENCOM office mayhem. Series of one-shots. Irregular updates.
1. Of Bits and Oranges

**Mi aerodeslizador esta lleno des anguilas.**

 **That's french for "I don't own TRON." This disclaimer applies to all future chapters as well.**

 **If I did, there would be a TR3N movie.**

 **Also, standard 'my first fanfic' disclaimer nobody wants to read.**

* * *

 **THE GRID**

The receiving array's grid of intangible lines glowed a brilliant white, contrasting the dim user-believer blue elsewhere in the facility. The array was the size of a small room and was encased in four glass walls, and had a black floor and ceiling. Facing the array were a set of complex control panels, operated by subordinate programs. Yori, the facility administrator, paced endlessly across the room as she reviewed the status of the array.

"Ping as ready," she said, satisfied with the data.

A subordinate nodded and manipulated his panel. "Ping sent," he said. Moments later, he added, "Receiving data stream."

Yori looked toward the array, which grew brighter as additional lines appeared to further subdivide it. The hum of the extreme energies penetrated the facility. Finally, when it could get no brighter, the array began derezzing, leaving a strange object in its place.

The object was the approximate size of a bit - a comparison that could easily be made thanks to the curious bit that approached it. At first glance it appeared to be a sphere, but as Yori held it, she could see smooth surface detailing far more complex than anything on the grid.

"Fractal?" she asked the bit. The object seemed to have infinite complexity. Maybe objects in the User world were based on fractals?

The bit remained silent. For a creature only capable of replying yes or no, it had an odd way of saying much more than that by ignoring the question. The bit knew as much about the object as she did - that is, nothing.

The object also had the colour of a program from outside the grid. It seemed odd that the Users would have the same colour as a hacker.

Yori's contemplation of the strange User object was cut short by a sudden darkness. Another power loss thanks to the MCP's hoarding. She hoped her User wouldn't hold it against her.

The lights were restored, and the array's walls redigitized. Her bit began looping 'no' in panic, and she realized the array was activating with the bit inside - and the precious User object outside, in her hand. Yori should never have touched the glitched thing in the first place...

"Cancel! Cancel!" Yori called to the subordinate programs, though it was too late. The array lit up and derezzed, leaving the space empty and the object still in Yori's hand. The bit was gone.

"Transfer complete," said the lead subordinate. "Digital-analog conversion returns success." The bit had been processed sucessfully by a system not designed to parse programs.

"Send error code..." Yori blanked. Of the countless error codes available to her, none of them satisfactorily covered the situation. "0x81A." Close enough.

She looked at the spherical object and resignedly put it in a memory box. The Users did not ask for a bit, and the next time the array was active Yori would return their elastic fractal sphere. Until then, she would hold onto a pointer to the box. Tron might find her new information about the User world intriguing...

* * *

 **EARTH**

Walter Gibbs frowned at the tiny monitor. "What was that?" He was expecting an orange, not a flying thing from the laser. Whatever it was, it was out of the camera's field of view.

"I just got a _reconstruction failure, target in buffer_ error," Lora said, beside him. "The orange is still in the laser. Whatever that is, it's not the orange."

Alan walked down the stairs from the elevator towards them. "Technical difficulties?"

"We put in an orange," Lora said, "and got something else out. Only Yori insists the orange is still in there!"

"Probably the MCP's fault," spat Alan. "All it does is get in the way."

"Unlikely," said the aging scientist. A diagnostic readout caught his eye, and he frowned. "Stranger and stranger. The particles for the orange are still suspended in memory. So what's that other thing made of?"

 _YES._

Everyone's heads snapped to the source of the sound. It was a unlike anything they'd ever seen before, a constantly morphing geometric object suspended in the air. Gibbs recognized two shapes it was alternating between. It must have heard them from within the digitization room and wandered out, looking for them.

Alan was the first to speak. "You're made of 'yes'?"

 _NO._ It transformed into a spiky red ball as it said it, then reverted to its original form. Somehow, it seemed disappointed in Alan.

Gibbs stepped towards it in excitement. "Yes, no, can you say anything else?"

 _NO._

"You're a bit!" he exclaimed.

 _YES._ The bit did not seem as excited about the discovery as Gibbs.

Alan reached out as if to touch the bit. "So this is what Yori thinks a bit would look like as a physical object?" He pulled his hand back as it transformed into a spiky ball of _NO._

"Yori's a driver for the laser hardware," Lora corrected. "It doesn't actually do the digitizations, just manages them."

 _YESNO._

"Yori's a driver?"

 _YES._

"Yori manages the digitizations?"

 _YES._

Lora frowned. What was the bit complaining about? " _It_ manages the digitizations?"

 _NO._

" _She?_ "

 _YES._

* * *

 **A/N: This series takes place in what I am calling the 'orange AU'. This chapter is where this timeline starts to differ from TRON canon.**

 **Future chapters planned.**

 **The plot of TRON 1982 remains unchanged unless otherwise posted.**


	2. File Orange Found

**This fanfic updates when I'm bored or should be doing something else (like studying for finals)**

* * *

Ever since Flynn's adventures in The Grid, the orange file that had been switched for the first bit was missing. The laser diagnostics clearly showed that the particles were suspended in memory, but the file itself could not be found. It was like a null pointer.

Of course, small inconveniences like that never stopped Progress. As such, another test was being conducted with the laser.

While Flynn had been successfully digitized, the laser team could not tell if Yori or the MCP had performed the conversion. They didn't trust the laser with human life yet. Especially not when it occasionally produced bits or structs instead of what they wanted, though that was Flynn's fault. They could always get the original object out, except for that first orange.

* * *

A goat shook its head and bleated as Lora tried to lead it out of the freight elevator to the laser. "C'mere, that's a good fuzzy," she said, baiting it with a chocolate chip cookie from a nearby vending machine. She was a programmer and scientist, not shepherd. She shouldn't be expected to know how to move goats properly. It followed, tracking her hand, and she led it into a small cage. Next time she would try a leash.

"Check laser target," commanded Gibbs. He did not want a repeat of the last incident, where the laser digitized the cage but not the goat. The startled animal had then begun to run around the lab, and attempts to calm it were undone by the appearance of several noisy bits when the team tried to retrieve the cage. They were still finding those bits NOing around the tower's offices.

"Laser confirms lock on goat," replied Lora.

Gibbs grinned. "Energize." He said that whenever he could.

The laser traced the goat and pulled it particle by particle into the system. Lora monitored a readout. "Yori reports successful digitization," she said.

A minute passed. "Reconstruct it," said Gibbs. Lora typed into her computer, and the laser powered up and built something. Lora and Gibbs excitedly ran up to the digitizing platform, but froze when they saw what the laser had made this time.

It wasn't a goat.

Nor was it a bit, or any number of bits, or even a struct.

It was much, much worse.

Lora broke the silence. "FLYNN!"

* * *

Alan Bradley glared at his computer monitor. He wanted to watch Lora's goat test, but no, Tron had to go missing. Again. And no amount of shiny touch screens or personal office phone - which happened to be ringing - in his new corner office would change that.

Right. The phone.

"Alan Bradley," he said automatically. "Lora? Sorry, this isn't a good now-" He stopped at Lora's unusually angry tone. Flynn must have interfered with their laser experiment again. If it was another bit Alan would kill him or feed him to it. If bits even could eat. "Yeah, sure, I'll be there in a minute."

* * *

Alan exited the elevator in the lab. "This better be important," he said as he strode toward Lora. "Tron's gone missing again and I have to present him to the Board tomorrow-"

Lora cut him off. "You want Tron?" She walked away, and beckoned for him to follow. He obliged, and followed her up the scaffolding toward the laser apparatus. She stopped at a wall of machinery, and pointed into the laser room. "Tron," she said.

Curious, Alan walked into the room, and gasped at what he saw. Across the room, in a suit of blue lights and circuitry, was himself. Without the glasses.

His doppelganger looked at him with an expression of awe, and was that reverence? "Alan-one," his counterpart said.

"You must be Tron," said Alan. "Flynn's told me about you. I mean, I programmed you, but I never thought I'd actually meet you..."

Tron bowed, and extended his disk toward his User.

"You can keep it..." responded Alan. The program somehow looked offended. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Of course not!"

"Sorry," said Alan, "I guess I'm not used to... this." They were both at a loss for words for the situation. "Um, why are you here?"

"CLU said you wanted to meet me in person, and that the current I/O towers are only suitable for basic instructions and updates."

"Flynn. Of course." Alan recognized Flynn's hacking program that had apparently been recovered from the recycle bin. "Would've been nice if he'd told me."

Tron immediately looked worried. "You do not want to see me? Forgive-"

"Tron," Alan interrupted. "It's fine," he said, trying to calm his program down - and wasn't that a weird thought. "I was going to update you while the servers are disconnected from the network, but now that you're here, I might as well show you around." He paused, looking at Tron's otherworldly attire. "Though most people here don't even know The Grid exists - I don't even know why it's so different from normal computers, programs aren't usually self-aware - so I'll have to pass you off as a cousin or something."

At Tron's blank look he added, "Like if we were both programs and had the same user, only a bit more complicated."

Tron nodded. "Like how Flynn pretended to be an hacking program at first."

Lora entered the digitizer room. "Flynn's on his way," she said to Alan. She turned to Tron. "I guess it's time to put you back in the computer."

"Actually," said Alan, "I was going to show him around. Let him see the 'user' world for a while. The system's not networked now, so he's not needed there for security or anything."

Lora sat at her desk - which was now _behind_ the laser for certain health and safety reasons - and began typing. Tron stared in amazement over her shoulder. "This is the other end of an I/O tower?"

"This is how users interact with the system, if that's what you're asking," said Lora. "This terminal is more advanced than most, since it runs the laser."

A message appeared, and Tron pointed at it. "What's this?"

"From Yori," Lora explained. Tron began to back away, as if he was intruding on some private moment between program and user, but Lora waved him back toward the screen. "She finally found that orange, it's been stuck in the laser since Flynn's adventure and - what do you mean file deleted?"

Two lines were clearly displayed.

 _File Found: "ORANGE_065"  
_ _File Deleted: "ORANGE_065"_

"Yori wouldn't delete something important," Tron quickly said.

"You're right," Lora said. She typed a request for the file log.

 _File "ORANGE_065":  
_ _Moved 07/21/82 from DIGITIZER to SYSTEM by YORI  
_ _Lost 07/22/82 - Error 0x1A3F  
_ _Recovered 08/02/82 by GOAT_02  
_ _Deleted 08/02/82 by GOAT_02_

"Goat?" Lora questioned. "Of course," she laughed. "The goat ate it."

* * *

 **Yes, Flynn was able to save the first CLU. Ram will be found eventually.**

 **melancholyvivace - I'm glad you like the concept.**


	3. Not Orange Juice

**I'll probably be using this fanfic as a place to dump a few headcanon ideas. And some crackfic chapters, which will come later.**

* * *

They were in an elevator. Alan was leading Tron up to his office to show him more about the User world and to get him one of Alan's spare business suits. The circuitry was bound to attract unwanted attention, and the translucent white lab coat wasn't doing a particularly good job of hiding it. As long as the two could get to their destination without incident, everything would be fine.

The elevator doors opened several floors below Alan's office, and a man with long messy brown hair and a maintenance cart entered. At least, partly entered. He stopped halfway when he recognized who the elevator's passengers were. "Alan," he said, "I didn't realize you had a twin." He looked the program over. "Are you glowing?"

Tron's eyes were wide in alarm, and Alan opened his mouth, but the janitor spoke first. "Oh nevermind, man, look, I swear I'm not high. You're not glowing, forget I said anything, I'm... tired. Long day." It was going to get a lot longer, since his shift just started.

His eyes were suspiciously red. Red like the brake lights on police cars stopped at a drug bust.

The janitor suddenly took a small cardboard box from the cart and handed it to Alan. "And whatever these are, can you pick them up when you're done? The yesnoyesno's annoying. And those spikes _hurt_."

Inside was another bit. Alan turned to Tron and held it cautiously in his hand. "I told him no more bits. This is going on Flynn's chair." He put it back in the box. "He can sit on it and then it'll go _no_." a muffled protesting _NO_ was heard, and Tron stifled a laugh. He remembered stepping on a Bit once. His foot nearly derezzed.

The elevator stopped. Tron and Alan got out. The walk to Alan's office was short.

"Well, um, this is my office." Alan gestured to invite Tron inside.

"Where you created me?" Tron said softly.

"Huh? No. I did that when I was in the cubicles. Your last update was done here though."

"Cubicles?"

"Small offices. Before I got this one" Alan ran his hand across his smooth desk, then declared, "Well I'm just gonna go grab a coffee. Actually, you should get changed first."

"What is coffee?"

"The drink that makes the world go 'round. Clothes first."

* * *

Tron was wearing one of Alan's spare suits: a light grey pinstripe three piece suit, and a white shirt. A loud red tie obfuscated the white light emanating from his chest circuits that leaked through the shirt. The helmet had been abandoned, and Tron's hair was enviably neat. A perk to being a digital life-form, Alan mused.

"This, Tron, this is coffee," declared Alan proudly as he held a styrofoam cup out to his firewall program.

The program accepted the cup, took a sip, and made a face. "And Users drink this?"

"Well, it wakes you up, and you get used to the taste after a while. Most people put sugar in it." Alan began digging around a cabinet next to the coffee machine.

"Popcorn tastes better. And are you not already awake when you drink it?" He accepted a small white packet from his user and looked at it quizzically.

"Well, technically yes, but it doesn't feel like it. And that is sugar," Alan said. Tron, understanding that sugar goes in coffee, dumped the packet in the drink. Without opening it.

Alan facepalmed. "No, Tron, the sugar is in the packet. You have to open it first. Like this," he said as he opened another packet and handed it to the program.

Tron dumped the contents of the package in his hand. "They look like voxels."

"It's not."

The firewall raised his hand to his mouth and licked the pile of sugar. His face lit up. "This is much better than coffee!"

"You can't eat pure sugar!" Alan cried.

Tron looked alarmed. "Is it dangerous?"

"No, it's - it's just not a thing people do. I guess you can eat sugar if you really want to. If you want candy, I can get you some?"

"What is 'candy'?"

"Stuff mostly made of sugar." Alan led Tron to a vending machine. "I think you'd like this," he said as he pointed to a red-wrapped bar.

Tron scanned the machine, and pressed the buttons associated with that bar. The machine whirred, and the bar fell to the bottom.

"Wait," said Alan. "Do that again."

Another bar fell. And another. And another. Then Alan pressed the button, and nothing happened. He frowned. "Why don't you have to pay for it?"

"Pay?"

"You normally have to give the machine money before it gives you anything," said Alan. "It's programmed that way."

"This is a program?"

"Not like you. It's not alive, just a bunch of transistors and stuff. Machinery. Only programs on The Grid are alive. Can't say why." There was a better explanation, but that was in Gibbs' report on the Encom servers. Which Alan was going to read tomorrow. "Well, this is chocolate." Alan unwrapped it, and handed the bar to Tron.

* * *

When Tron emptied that vending machine, they returned to the lab. Gibbs was fascinated by the program consuming human food. He was also fascinated by Tron's ability to use vending machines without paying.

The current theory was that programs ran on energy, and sugary foods had more energy. Breath samples suggested that food Tron ate was combusted, vaporized, and exhaled. Much more convenient than the standard human waste disposal system. The more Tron ate, though, the harder it was to take the samples. Specifically, it was harder to make the program stay still long enough to take one. He had not gotten a chance to make a hypothesis on the vending machine phenomenon.

A plastic dinner plate flew through the air and clattered against the far wall. Tron held his hand out, expecting it to return. It didn't. Not until a junior employee picked it up and handed it back to him.

"It was supposed to come back..." the firewall said. "Anyways," he said cheerfully, before continuing to energetically tell stories of fighting the MCP with his disk.

If he were human, which he wasn't, people would've said he was drunk. He wasn't, though, but they were saying it anyways. The truth was that the excess energy was causing him to act like it.

Alan grabbed his program's shoulders before the plate was thrown again. "Okay, Tron. No more sugar for you." Did Tron just _pout_ at him? "Why don't you sit down before you break something."

A soft _YES_ was heard.

* * *

 **Programs influencing electronics (the vending machine) was just a random idea I had while writing this. Technopath Tron. Bonus points for alliteration in the previous sentence. Most of this stuff gets made up as I write it. I'm a User, I'll improvise.**

 **Also, 'irregular updates' only means 'daily updates' when I should be doing something important.**

 **Changed rating to T for drug references. Will not be going M ever.**


	4. Exception

**I'm trying to figure out the programs' versions of human emotions. Exceptions? And catching the exception is like controlling emotions or something.**

 **Yes, I program. No, I'm not got at it. A good programmer is usually not a university student who starts writing fanfics during finals.**

* * *

Yori stood alone before the receiving array. The DLL programs that had filled the control room before were elsewhere, as her latest update reduced her dependency on them. Her User wanted the laser system to be isolated from the network, immune from attack. It was understandable, for a project that could eventually be directly responsible for the safety of thousands of users as they fled to Hawaii from the responsibilities of life over the network.

The array began glowing with subdivisions as it saved the input stream. Yori's hands flew over the controls, stabilizing random fluctuations. Her mind cycled rapidly, inventing new file storage standards as she worked. Whatever this was, it wasn't Tron, but it was as challenging as Flynn. Organic. And she had to do it by herself.

Except it was Tron. Wearing strange clothing that she assumed to be from the User world, as well as strange lenses over his eyes. And looking like he had just suffered a fatal runtime error. _Did they update him to a new version?_

The array derezzed, and Yori loaded a medium sized file. _LLLSDLaserDiagnostics_. Values were logged as a ping notified her the laser was no longer active

 _Why is there an object in the particle buffer? I can't clean loose particles out unless..._ She glanced at Tron, who was now standing, recovering from his crash. Of course Tron's new User clothes would cause problems. They would have to be sent back before the buffer could be cleaned. Or she could try integrating the object's particles with the system's storage...

Yori called a function on the console that displayed a list on a screen.

 _LLLSDLaserBufferContents_  
 _Water{mL}: 3.5E4_  
 _Carbon{g}: 2.0E4_  
 _Ammonia{mL}: 4.0E3_  
 _Phosphorous{g}: 8.0E2_  
 _Salt{g}: 2.5E2_  
 _Saltpeter{g}: 1.0E2_  
 _Sulfur{g}: 8.0E1_  
 _Fluorine{g}: 7.5E0_  
 _Iron{g}: 5.0E0_  
 _Silicon{g}: 3.0E0_  
 _+15_

That list, those proportions, Yori had worked with them before. She knew what that was. She looked at Tron.

"Lora?" he said.

She threw an exception and crashed.

* * *

Lora stood in the laser lab, hunched over a keyboard. Her eyes scanned the monitor as her program wrote to it. "The laser'll be offline until tomorrow," she said to Flynn. "Yori's running diagnostics on the laser and finding loose particles." Something beeped ominously. "And she crashed. She's never done that before..."

"Sure she has." Flynn leaned casually against a wall of expensive scientific equipment.

"Well yes, but never with anything important."

"Maybe she was just so happy to see Tron that she crashed."

"Funny." Someone else entered the room, and she turned to them. "Hey, Alan!"

'Alan' glanced behind him. "Null pointer," he said. "Where is Alan?" Tron, then.

"Tron?" said Lora. "Didn't Flynn put you back?"

"I did," said Flynn. His face fell. "Oh..."

"Flynn," the program growled, "Where is my User?"

"In the Grid," Flynn said sheepishly. "Look I thought he was you!"

Lora punched Flynn's arm. "Alan has glasses, Tron doesn't. Tron glows, Alan doesn't. Tron is a computer program, how the hell could you mix them up?"

"I'm sorry, ok?" Flynn raised his hands defensively. "I'll fix this-"

"You can't fix this. I have to fix this, since it's _my_ laser."

Gibbs chose that moment to enter the room. "Technically it's mine," he said. "What's wrong with it?"

" _Flynn,_ " Lora said, glaring at the person in question, "digitized Alan instead of Tron."

"Oh dear," said the graying scientist. "Doesn't he present Tron today?"

Tron remembered one of his conversations with his User. "Yes, he was going to try to... sell inanimate copies of me to some shareholders."

"More like convince the shareholders you're worth making copies of," Gibbs corrected. He sighed. "I suppose you'll have to do it."

* * *

Tron stood before the panel of shareholders. They were seated around a long mahogany table, wearing equally somber and dull charcoal suits. Any wrinkles or opportunities for self-expression had been nearly ironed out. Most of them sported patchy comb-overs.

The firewall was radiant in comparison. Probably because he had glowing circuitry.

He still felt like he was about to throw an exception.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Bradley," intoned Adam Smith, one of the shareholders. "I thought you wore glasses?"

Tron threw the exception. He froze, trying to catch it before he crashed. None of his memories applied-

"Trying contacts?"

-but the shareholder caught it for him. "Just trying them out," Tron improvised.

"Hm." Smith nodded. "So what do you have for us today?"

"TRON JA-30706," Tron said proudly. A bit too proudly, but it was justified.

Tron launched into his presentation about his duties in the system without actually saying he was a program. As Flynn promised, the second he said the word 'algorithm' they all tuned, out, nodding politely at regular intervals before nodding off entirely.

* * *

 **Adam Smith is named after an alias of James May.**

 **melancholyvivace - There'll be more of both later on.**

 **Guest - Good to hear!**

 **I. J. Girl - I don't think she would've had too much difficulty. It's a specially designed facility. Once Tron and Alan are where they belong, though, something from another test may get loose...**


End file.
